Career
Following his education, Swanton first did fieldwork in the Northwest. In his early career, he worked mostly with the Tlingit and Haida. He produced two extensive compilations of Haida stories and myths, and transcribed many of them into Haida. These transcriptions have served as the basis for Robert Bringhurst's recent (1999) translation of the poetry of Haida mythtellers Skaay and Gandl. Swanton spent roughly a year with the Haida.
He began working for the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. He worked with them for the rest of his career, almost 40 years. Another major study area was of the Muskogean-speaking peoples in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. Swanton published extensively on the Creek people, Chickasaw, and Choctaw. He also documented analyses about many other less well-known groups, such as the Biloxi and Ofo. He argued in favor of including the Natchez language with the Muskogean language group.
Swanton wrote works including partial dictionaries, studies of linguistic relationships, collections of native stories, and studies of social organization. He worked with Earnest Gouge, a Creek who recorded a large number of traditional stories at Swanton's request. These materials were never published by Swanton. They have recently been published online as Creek Folktales by Earnest Gouge, in a project by The College of William and Mary. The website includes some of the recordings by Gouge.
Swanton also worked with the Caddo. He published briefly on the quipu system of the Inca.
Swanton was president of the American Anthropological Association in 1932. He also served as editor of the American Anthropological Association's flagship journal, American Anthropologist, in 1911 and from 1921-1923.
Swanton died in Newton, Massachusetts at the age of 85.
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